Handicraft industry in Tang dynasty can be divided into government-run industry and private industry. In the middle of the Tang Dynasty, there were Shaofu Supervisor, Jiangzuo Supervisor and Qi Jun Supervisor, who were in charge of all kinds of official handicraft production. In local governments, there are also workshops for making brocade and weapons. The products produced by official handicrafts are mainly for the consumption and use of the court, nobles, bureaucrats and the government.

The workers in official handicraft workshops mainly include official handmaiden and criminals, fan households and miscellaneous households, short-fan craftsmen and employees. The private handicraft industry in the Tang Dynasty was first of all a family sideline run by a large number of individual farmers. The products they produce are also sold in the market when there is surplus for their own use and tax payment. At that time, the number of workshops run by craftsmen, such as brocade workshops, paper workshops, dyeing workshops, smelting workshops (casting handicrafts) and bronze workshops (casting bronzes), increased significantly compared with before, and some private workshops were also quite large. He Mingyuan, a rich man in Dingzhou (Dingxian County, Hebei Province), has "500 silk machines at home", which is an obvious example, but on the whole, the scale is relatively small.

Most of all kinds of workshops are concentrated in cities, and the owners of workshops are skilled masters who teach skills. The state recruited craftsmen to serve in government-run workshops in turn, which seriously hindered the development of private handicrafts.